Avi Lubin talks Queerness, Protests, and Social Media effect on Contemporary Art
The work I-BE AREA by American artist Ryan Trecartin occupied me from the moment I was exposed to it as a student. Since then, I have been following his work and watching more of his films dealing with similar themes. This entails his preoccupation with queer and the disassembly and reassembly of the concept of identity in humor, using grotesque and amusing visual language that resonates in all his sculptural works.
I spoke with Avi Lubin, Curator of HaMidrasha Gallery, about Ryan Trecartin’s iconic work, queerness in art, and its connection to the two other exhibitions on display at the gallery.
Image: Ryan Trecartin, I-BE AREA, 2007
gggaaallleeerrryyy: In 2014, you curated 'Dark Times' at the University Gallery of Art, Tel Aviv University, a group exhibition with the participation of artists such as Michal Na'aman, Tomer Sapir, and Ryan Trecartin. What led you to choose I-BE AREA along with exhibitions by Meital Katz Minerbo and Meir Tati that are also on display in the gallery?
Avi Lubin: Originally, I suggested to Ryan to present his latest work, WHETHER LINE that was shown in 2019 at Prada Foundation in Milan. After that, the video was supposed to be shown in Shanghai and due to bureaucratic matters and rejection due to the corona, we were not able to feature it. Then Ryan and I started corresponding, Ryan suggested to the work I-BE AREA.
The connection between Meital, Meir, and Ryan, came from abstract ideas, which as soon as they began to take shape I began to understand the connection between them.
Meital also deals with queer, formless forms, assimilations, being part of the landscape, and the relationship between the individual and the environment. Whether it's from a place of extremism and grotesqueness as in Ryan's work it comes from a place assimilated and hidden.
The connections came from places that occupy me, the subversion, the political resistance that changes form, that has the ability to be dual, on the one hand, to resist on the other, to celebrate life and dance, and bring up a change from production of a narrative that is told very openly.
Image: Ryan Trecartin, I-BE AREA, 2007
ggg: One of the most intriguing things to me about Ryan's work (and that's one of the reasons I always come back to watch it), is the preoccupation with the self. Ryan predicted in 2007 what is actually happening today in the internet age. The inability to associate the characters’ changes, the fast and intense pace of speech, the obsessive use of the younger generation with filters and platforms like Tik Tok and Snapshot.
A.L: I'm also always going back to his work. An interesting thing that happened both in 'Dark Times' (2014) in which Ryan's work was featured, and in the current exhibition, is that teenagers who usually go to exhibitions with their parents and get bored, are sucked into this work and do not want to leave. Ryan was able to understand something accurate, with the help of the visual language he uses, despite the extremism, he was able to deeply understand the place of the younger generation.
I recently noticed that my kids, who are in the fifth grade, are sending their friends voicemails on WhatsApp in fast gear, as can be heard in Ryan's work.
So it is precisely the intensity of the work that pertains to precisely these places, which may be more difficult for adults to contain.
Image: Ryan Trecartin, I-BE AREA, 2007
ggg: A powerful and rather extreme part of the film, is the moment when the little kids submit audition videos for adoption, sort of home videos of them dancing, or doing a show. There is a critical aspect to Ryan's work, on American culture, which he deals with by virtue of his identity and plays with visual representations. It is directly related to the changing popular culture and existing representations in our society. How do you experience this time in the context of the exhibition and where we are today?
It is precisely in these places, that I am experiencing renewal on this issue, I felt during the protests in Balfour, that there is a new way of resisting, it is not just shouting “no!”, and still through the same place to produce change. Ryan makes it possible to do the super grotesque thing and make it another present option within the language of art.
His films were screened at the Venice Biennale, at the Guggenheim not necessarily in places where queer culture reaches.
What's interesting about his work and also of the artists Meital Katz Minerbo and Meir Tati, and that preoccupies me, is how to tell a story not in a linear way, the ability to take stories that are not related to each other and weave them together into something not necessarily clear. Not in the way that something led to something, there is an ability to see fragments and suddenly there is understanding.
I even think about it, in the context of how a story is told today on social media in Instagram’s stories or Tik Tok versus writing posts on Facebook. Telling a story in a different way, one can understand the experience they went through it without them telling it coherently. And it's interesting to see where it's going in the art world.
Image: Ryan Trecartin, I-BE AREA, 2007
ggg: It fascinates me too. The way in which new ways of telling a story exist in art. For example, the text that accompanies an exhibition. For example, your choice to write a short text for Ryan's work is distinct from the texts that accompany the other exhibitions. Tell me about the thought behind the choice.
A.L: Yes, I feel that in Ryan's work, because of the structure, anything too concrete you say, is a fragment, the experience in one sentence is just another way to tell a story. I felt that he manages to tell the story in an amazing way and that in this case, the mediation of the text is not necessary.
People experience this work differently, there will be those who will see five minutes and they will have a hard time with the pace and bear the experience, and there will be those who will be sucked into it and will not be able to get up.
Image: Ryan Trecartin, I-BE AREA, 2007
ggg: There is a sense sometimes that you are imprisoned in the world he has created, and at times it is frightening. The experience is so intense that I sometimes forget that it is not a realistic situation and there are moments that you get lost within the experience, and I feel that it is really a singular phenomenon, dealing with questions of origin and identity. Sentences like "It’s so hard to be me" when it relates to a clone. This is something that interests me, it also happened to me in Gaspar Noah's “Climax”.
A.L: That's something interesting you say. There is the tension between a complete, incoherent, and completely insane release and the fact that it is very tight. Clearly, the editing work is super accurate in this case. And the knowledge that this is not a difficult drug experience but that the characters are just like that.
Both the current work and the one I presented at the university gallery have Ryan's preoccupation with the original question, there is a character who is an autotype, you are actually mimicking something of an imitation that is itself an imitation, but there is a prototype that everyone imitates (like Ivy's character in the movie).
His ability to take a medium like sculpture, amateur theater, queer trash, and children, all mixed together in a super weird way on the one hand, but on the other hand, realizes something very true about this moment in time.
